Reading Time:3minutes In early April, about 400 foreign employees of RAMCO, a Lebanese construction, facility, and waste management company, went on strike to demand payment in US dollars and better working conditions. The strike, believed to be the first of its kind among foreign laborers in Lebanon, could set an example for other groups of workers demanding…

Reading Time:7minutes For those who are addicted to adrenaline rushes from springtime thrill rides, March 2020 may very well be as good as it can ever get. But only as far as the thrills of being exposed to the mother-of-all economic shocks. For the large majority of us, it is a world-engulfing nightmare. For the Lebanese, it…

Reading Time:11minutes They want to bring jobs to jobs-starved Lebanon. They also want to do something that has been tried many times and rarely been crowned by success: mobilize direct investments into Lebanon from the country’s large global diaspora. Specifically, they want to seed job investments—work opportunities that can be located anywhere in the world, yet be…

Reading Time:5minutes In Lebanon’s service-oriented economy, the hospitality and tourism sector is largely considered a beacon of strength. Its direct contribution to GDP by end of 2018 was 6.5 percent (according to the World Travel and Tourism Council) and it employs 150,000 people, the biggest employer after the public sector, per the tourism syndicates of Lebanon (the…

Reading Time:6minutes Decades of social and economic injustice were a driving factor in the social unrest that burst onto Lebanon’s streets in mid-October 2019, unfolding into a revolution. Lebanese had been pushed to breaking point by the effects of a longstanding economic malaise that has since worsened into a ongoing financial crisis with job losses, lowering of…

Reading Time:11minutes Businesses across all sectors in Lebanon, and the employees that are at their foundation, are suffering under a weakening economy. Indicators of this reality are in full display across the country and include the long lines in front of banks most mornings, the “for rent” signs now vying with the “70 percent sale” signs for…